Sears Medallist II Hybrid Insta-view?

[Tubejunke]

Hi everyone! I am resurrecting this thread as I am once again trying to find good homes for certain sets in my collection. I still have and use this set and it performs well. I can't send it to any foreign country, and frankly do not prefer to trust in companies like U.P.S. or the U.S.P.S. for safe shipment of any television set. I don't think that it is cost effective for either party in a vintage TV transaction to go through the time, trouble, and expense of properly packing and shipping the average old TV. The best situations are when someone is within driving distance and can pick up a set. Anyway, this set is in excellent cosmetic and electronic condition. If you are interested in late 60s, early 70s color hybrid technology, then this will be a great set for your collection. I just can't keep them all and my primary interests are 40's to early 60s. I can post or email a picture if anyone is interested.

[Tubejunke]

I got an email saying that Hiram 11 posted a reply here, but there is nothing. Not sure what happened....

[zenithfan1]

It was spam.....I got rid of it.

[Tubejunke]

OK thanks! I got all excited thinking that perhaps someone was interested in this one.

[zenithfan1]

You're welcome, and I would be interested in such a set by the way. I read through the thread just now. I used to have a similar Sears set and regret selling it.

[Jeffhs]

The trouble with the Chromix control on old Sears color TVs (and similar controls on other makes) was that many people didn't know how to adjust it and/or even what it was for, so the control usually wound up being set to midpoint (b&w or neutral) and forgotten. Today's flat screens (as well as CRT color TVs of the last few years before digital TV) are made such that there are few or no adjustments to be made; just turn the set on, select the channel you want to watch, and enjoy the program, without a second thought to the color controls. In fact, I remember reading somewhere online just recently that the on-screen tint and color controls on today's FP TVs are simply holdovers from the NTSC era, and don't really do that much for the picture; the advice given in that article was simply to leave those controls set at their factory defaults, using the set's preset color settings (on my Insignia 19" FP they are Custom, Vivid, and two others I don't recall at the moment) to adjust the picture to your liking.

The color and tint adjustments on FP sets have their uses, though they don't have nearly the range the old NTSC CRT color sets' controls had. If you set the preset color option of your FP TV to Custom, it is in fact possible to adjust the on-screen tint and color intensity controls for the kind of picture you like. In fact, those controls will also work with the presets activated, albeit with limited range. I'd use Custom for setting color parameters to individual preferences.

The color-temperature control never really disappeared from color TVs, although CRT sets of the '80s-'90s don't have such an adjustment. However, most flat screens probably do have an on-screen menu option for setting color temperature, although the adjustment only has three steps (at least it does on my set) that adjust this parameter by a set amount; it is not continuously variable as the Chromix, et al. controls were. However, I think, as with the Chromix and other color-temperature adjustments on CRT sets, most set owners even today just leave the three-step color temp control set at its default and then forget it. What goes around comes around.

[lnx64]

Little curious there, you mention color TV's from the 80's and 90's cant have their color temperature adjusted.. I'm not so sure that is true. They all still have drive and cut controls for the reds, greens, and blues.. And that alone can adjust the color temperature.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by lnx64

Little curious there, you mention color TV's from the 80's and 90's cant have their color temperature adjusted.. I'm not so sure that is true. They all still have drive and cut controls for the reds, greens, and blues.. And that alone can adjust the color temperature.

Brandon, what I meant was that color sets of the '80s-'90s do not have a front panel control to adjust color temperature as the older sets did. However, as I mentioned in my post, today's flat screens (and perhaps a few inexpensive '80s-'90s CRT sets) do have three-step color temperature adjustments as a menu option.

Most TVs that had any kind of color-fidelity (temperature) control had it on the front panel, along with the color intensity and tint. Some manufacturers, notably Magnavox, had only a 2-position slide switch on the back of the set, to turn the effect on or off. Magnavox called their color-temperature control Chromatone. Zenith called their color-fidelity adjustment the Color Commander, Panasonic or Sony (don't remember which) had the "Color Pilot", and so on. These controls could inject a soft blue or red color into a b&w picture, but most set owners found the adjustment too critical, too confusing, or both, so they just left the control set at midrange (black and white or neutral) and forgot it. Some people watched their expensive color sets literally for years or decades (!) with seriously incorrect colors (because they did not know how to adjust the color controls) or in black and white because they did not realize that, on a color set, the fine tuning control must be adjusted exactly in order for the color to show at all. That was why automatic color adjustment schemes (RCA's ACM, Zenith's Color Sentry, et al.) and automatic fine tuning controls were introduced by many high-end TV manufacturers (and later incorporated in all sets) -- to take the guesswork out of properly tuning in a color picture.

These systems, however, often did not adjust colors properly, leaving the viewer to turn off the automatic control and set the color controls manually. General Electric's VIR (Vertical Interval Reference) auto-color system of the '80s was one of the worst in this regard. I maintain the best way to tune in a color picture on an older color set is to turn off any auto-color control scheme your set may have, and adjust the color and tint manually until the picture looks right to your eyes. The viewer is a much better judge of picture quality than the best automatic color control system on earth.

[Eric H]

Actually a lot of the better sets from that era had color temperature controls.
My XBR had the choice of Trinitone Low and Trinitone High.
High was factory setting, low added a bit of Red to the mix.

[wkand]

Very good dieseljeep!!!! Chromix = Sears Engineering pinnacle! I LOVE it!!

[Tubejunke]

My Sears Medalist has a "One Button Color" push button switch just slightly below the UHF tuner and to the left. I have noticed that something is not quite jiving with the button and I just set the color manually; no big deal. The only problem that I have ever noted with this set is that after a good warm up period the contrast seems to change suddenly. Still a decent color picture albeit a bit duller than I might like when that happens. I wish that someone would get this set from me because it's not really an antique to me the way I see the older sets from the 40s and 50s, but it is a good set and here in the crap/flat panel era the set is growing more and more nostalgic. I would love to see a vintage electronics hobbyist get it and not a Goodwill where it will likely end up trashed. I have a lot of the oddball tubes that manufacturers were using at that time like Compactrons, so I may be able to supply extra tubes for the set. I have no other sets of that era, so I would like to get rid of all of the tubes like that that I have. If anyone has a need send me some numbers and I'll see if I have them.

[Tubejunke]

This set is still around if any new interests have come about. I am glad to know that there are people even interested in what I call later sets. With the advent of the flat screen, eventually anything with a CRT will be nosalgia I guess. I have noticed at least one or two younger people who are into vintage electronics who I guess look at say a 1976 Curtis Mathis, or even something from the 80s as being intriquing the way I saw the then plentiful 50s sets back in the 80s.

I never got interested much in 60s stuff as it was so similar to what everyone had in the 70s and 80s, but the 50s stuff was, along with other things from that era, simply cool to look at and examine what looked like a city at night behind the back cover. Anyway, the Medallist 2 needs a good home before the Goodwill dumpster ends up eating it!?!?!